


The Mute

by Symmet



Series: New Wounds [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bobby is done with this crap, Dean is out of action, John kind of makes you sad inside, Radical Face, Sad Sammy, Song Lyrics, because they're rad, mute!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:25:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2831441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Symmet/pseuds/Symmet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam never dealt well when Dean was gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mute

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics belong to the song **The Mute** by Radical Face. No copyright infringement intended.

_Well, as a child I mostly spoke inside my head_

_I had conversations with the clouds, the dogs, the dead_

_And they thought my broken, that my tongue was coated lead_

_But I just couldn't make my words make sense to them_

-

When Sam was seven, Dean nearly died.

No, it wasn't to say this was the only time Dean had nearly died, in fact, Dean had nearly died on many occasions by that point, but this just so happened to be the first time his little brother was entirely aware of it.

Nearly every other time, Dean had been on a hunt - though this time was no different in that regard - and though he may have had a terrible moment or two at first, by the time he got back home with John, it was not nearly so fatal or terrifying. And if Sam was afraid the entire night, and fell into an exhausted sleep because he'd lain awake too long worrying, Dean would just tease him about it in the morning, and that was always better than the alternative.

This time, John did not return with Dean, scrapped up but content (or in those occasional instances reserved and withdrawn, having suffered a fierce conversation with a seemingly disappointed father), but rather, sends Bobby to pick the seven year old from the motel.

The initial moments of delight at the familiar face are worn away by the grim expression it wears, solemn in a way that curls ice-like in Sam's chest.

They pack up everything and drive to Bobby's house in relative silence.

"Dean's gotten in an accident," Bobby starts, and Sam knows he shouldn't know about the journal, and Dean has told him to never let on, so he takes advantage of this awkward predicament the way only a crafty child knows how. And he may feel bad about it later, poking so relentlessly at Bobby, who can lie the identification off a CIA agent in a two-minute, long-distance phone call, but who can't really bring himself to lie to a child, especially one who has, more or less innocently perfected the "puppy eyes of doom" as Dean curses them, but for now his brother and father are missing and Bobby won't say how.

_Are they dead?_

For a moment Sam panics, but ignores it in favor of letting Bobby slowly trail off with, "So yer Dad went and took him to a hospital, and you're hangin' with me a couple days. Sound straight?"

_No._

"What happened?" Sam says immediately, bright eyes trained on the uncomfortable hunter, who cannot maintain eye contact - he has the excuse of the steering wheel and road ahead, although it is devoid of other cars or life for the moment.

"Not... particularly sure of the details." Bobby says, which is met with the first beginnings of Sam's early prototypes of a "bitch face", a term also coined by the coarse yet effective vocabulary of the elder Winchester.

”You're _always_ sure of the details, Bobby." Sam says, perhaps with a touch of the reverence a seven year old can impart into a statement, the absolute belief in something that is entirely to do with an absence of doubt.

Bobby winces.

"Well, he got hit..." He makes a slight face as if cursing a certain Winchester for not delivering an acceptable excuse, and finishes lamely with, "... by a car," seeming to regret that once it has left his mouth. He peers down at the seven year old strapped seriously in his passenger seat, who is staring straight ahead with a blank determination.

Sam processes this. They both knew it was most certainly not a car, but Bobby didn't know that he knew that.

Cars were big. Fast. _Powerful._

Sam cringed inside, batting away the mental images so easily supplied by a young, imaginative mind.

Bobby could have said, “ran into a wall," or even "fell down the stairs," although that one was so over-used Sam had known it was cliché before he'd even learned the meaning of the word. Sam got a sinking feeling in his stomach that this was worse than the typical couple stitches on the forehead or fractured elbow.

Perhaps even worse than the time Dean broke three of his fingers.

Sam sat back, managing through sheer force of will to not cry, as few children can manage, but having learnt the experience watching Dean, always resolute in his efforts to stay strong for Sam.

This was perhaps the first time it occurred to Sam to doubt in the infallible image Dean had instilled in him of their Father. For if _he_ couldn't keep Dean safe, who could? This proved the beginning of many tumultuous years, rocked by Sam's defiance and Dean's loyalty to a man that put Dean in as much trouble as out.

”How long." He said quietly, in the soft voice that was neither a demand nor a question, but commanding all the same.

Bobby sighed, "Don't know."

Sam accepted it for then, clasping his small fingers in his lap to contemplate the future, staring out the window and feeling vaguely hollow inside.

-

_If you only listen with your ears... I can't get in_

-

It took two weeks to finally get John to admit that Dean wouldn't be better for a while.

It took Sam pleading and the eventual arrival of a melt down - not a tantrum, as John readily referred to it at first - for John to tell him that Dean was in a coma.

The initial moment of relief that Dean wasn't dead was quickly replaced with horror.

"You didn't tell me!?" Sam nearly screamed, enraged, _now_ beginning to border the thin line of hysteria and a tantrum.

John, of course, did not react well to that, and the yelling began soon after, with a quick interception from Bobby, who managed to yell twice as much as the both of them.

That was when Sam stopped talking.

At first it was met with disbelief, perhaps John rolling his eyes at the attempts of a seven year old to convey his discontent.

It changed to feigned indifference for only a couple days before John was angry, as he was want to often being.

But Sam had never known John to be otherwise, as Dean had, though perhaps it was more blessing, not so bitter, in truth, so he ignored it resolutely.

In the end Sam hadn't stopped talking because he was upset.

He stopped talking because he was afraid of what would come out of his mouth.

Sam stopped talking because he was afraid of what they would hear.

-

_And I spent my evenings pullin' stars out of the sky_

  _And I'd arrange them on the lawn where I would lie_

  _And in the wind I'd taste the dreams of distant lives_

  _And I would dress myself up in them through the night_

-

Sam stopped going to school for the amount of time he stopped talking.

It was annoying enough to create the fake identification already, but the amount of paperwork that John would have to produce to legitimize a child that refused to speak was beyond bother. Not when he could be hunting.

Bobby took to teaching Sam other things, instead.

When Sam refused to train in hunting - actual hunting, actual gun shooting and trapping and tracking - without Dean, for they had always trained together, Bobby took him inside to keep his small mind occupied, although he was hard pressed to find material that wasn't entirely inappropriate for a seven year old to attempt to read, ignoring all the jargon and big words, but simply focussing on the fact that he could not often scan through the pages and not find a drawing entirely too graphic for a small mind to see and not have nightmares about afterwards.

As it was, Bobby discovered several copies of works - important, valuable works - when he did the "spring cleaning" (it was called that only jokingly, for let it be known that Bobby rarely went to such lengths to clean so much as to "organize", a term used just as loosely to describe the myriad of things he kept and archived, for no other would likely describe the state of his home as "organized", although it was strangely efficient for the keeping of information in it's own way, as Bobby did not often disappoint, as experience with his services dictated) as he searched for material that Sam could read.

And in the afternoons and nights when Bobby was busy Sam lay out on the great heaps of cars and twisted metal, for Sam did not travel with his father during this time but rather stayed at Bobby's house as a quiet shadow that made Bobby both relieved and worried at once.

He worried after the idea of all that Sam might hear or see, for it was much harder for the hunter to hide what he did with the boy there constantly, without school or his brother to distract him. But Sam did not pry or press, at least not as zealously as Bobby would have thought the small, curious mind would have, and though it was a relief, he was usually one to look a gift horse in the mouth. And that the quiet child did not ask as much as he certainly should have were he his normal self, was of concern to Bobby, the kind that niggles in the back of one's mind as they drift to sleep, or when he saw the boy staring up at the stars in the night, contemplating the old book of constellations - and their mythology - Bobby had managed to conjure, although with no humble amount of dust.

And it was only two months, but it felt like forever, or the beginnings of forever, settling into normalcy, Sam, who began learning sign language and bowed his head instead of saying thank you or sorry, and tapped you on the shoulder, one meant excuse me, two meant bye, and a fist I love you, and always kept a notebook in some pocket or other, and his fingers began to always appear dirty because of the ink that crawled it's way up his fingernails and refused to get washed out, stained them grey, just like his voice.

When it ended, the notebook was discarded, in the way a homeless man finds good shelter and discards the ragged clothing he'd had before for new, fresh clothes and a warm home.

When Dean woke up, it was to great apparent relief to all but John Winchester, who was out of state, although it was no doubt a relief to him - just one they never witnessed. When he returned, Sam missed the the silent look that was shared between he and Bobby as Dean rushed to his Father's arms, the stowing away of some curious things that Bobby reluctantly took. This was the first time Bobby learned what was needed for a demon summoning ritual.

For when Dean again lay in a hospital bed so long in the future, unable to speak or move, and John traded something with demons, it was only his life and the Colt, and nothing more.

He had already sold his soul.

-

_While my folks would sleep in separate beds... and wonder why_

-

Dean was never told that Sam had gone completely quiet for two months.

Bobby never found the words to say it, and John wouldn't have, so he simply took to stressing throughout the coming years that Sam cared a hell of a lot about Dean, _ya idjit_. And Sam of course, wouldn't have wanted Dean to know in any case.

And so it was that when, so many years later, Sam truly lost Dean, he could not actually speak for several weeks - beyond the simple, forced conversations he shared rarely, and only by necessity, with Bobby.

Before Ruby found him.

And he visited two quiet graves, silent like himself, struck still and calm.

And though they were separate beds, his parents were together now, and that he could take comfort in.

But it was the tiniest comfort, the sort that is a lamp before a raging storm, lost to the pain and rage that Dean was in Hell.

And it was all because of him.

-

_And through them days I was a ghost atop my chair_

  _My dad considered me a cross he had to bear_

  _And in my head I'd sing apologies and stare_

  _As my mom would hang the clothes across the line_

-

And Sam was like a phantom. He was tireless in his pursuit of Lilith, unshakeable and cold.

Driven like so many of the ghosts he'd faced time and time again.

There was nothing healthy about him, nothing safe. When he was alone, he seemed empty and dangerous, which was not untrue, and most avoided him. He did not change much when people were around.

In a way, he became _more_ efficient as an FBI impersonator, serious and solemn in a way that made the suspicious or nervous bend to his words so that his presence could leave, because there was something sad about it, that dragged down cold in them, something unshakably true. Something too dangerous to question. vAnd there was a level of unknown about him, because they didn't know what could cause such complete ice, but though they were afraid of it, they believed it. So much so that he managed to lie his way out of an encounter with some other, actual agents, before fleeing.

-

_And she would try to keep the empty from her eyes_

-

And sometimes, when he didn't dream of Dean or Jessica dying, and there wasn't simple nothingness, he dreamed of his mother.

And she always looked so sad.

No matter how he called out, she wouldn't speak.

And he supposed he understood that.

-

_So, then one afternoon I dressed myself alone_

  _I packed my pillowcase with everything I owned_

  _And in my head I said "goodbye," then I was gone_

  _And I set out on the heels of the unknown_

  _So my folks could have a new life of their own_

-

Sometimes, he thought about what would have happened if he'd been better about running away.

Hadn't fallen in love with Jess. Hadn't agreed to go with Dean.

And wasn't it sick that if his brother had died looking for their dad, at least it was better than dying for Sam and going to Hell?

And Dean, who had been so angry about John giving his soul, had in turn placed that burden on Sam, with little regard for the consequences.

And he'd left in the first place because he thought it was safer for himself, and perhaps safer for John, because he knew that if he stayed, and John kept sending Dean into danger so easily, he might kill the old man.

And Dean wouldn't have forgiven him for that.

So he'd ran.

In search of something where he wouldn't have to be afraid for who he cared about, wouldn't have to worry.

In the end, of course, it hadn't mattered.

But then?

It had made all the difference.

Because Jess had understood. Or had thought she had.

Or he had thought she had.

Yeah.

In the end it didn't matter.

-

_So that maybe I could find someone_

_Who could hear the only words that I'd known_

-

"Hey, Sammy."


End file.
